Here in New england

Saturday

Jun 27, 2009 at 6:00 AM

BOSTON — Lawyers for Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who calls himself Clark Rockefeller, have asked a judge to throw out his kidnapping and assault convictions, arguing that the state’s mental health expert was unqualified and that a prosecutor made an improper closing argument.

Gerhartsreiter was convicted earlier this month in the kidnapping of his 7-year-old daughter and an assault on a social worker.

During the trial, his lawyers claimed he was suffering from a delusional disorder and was legally insane when he snatched his daughter during a supervised visit in Boston last July.

Prosecutors portrayed him as a master manipulator who has used various aliases and told elaborate lies about his past since moving to the United States more than 30 years ago.

In a motion unsealed Thursday, Gerhartsreiter’s lawyers claim the state’s expert was not qualified to testify about whether Gerhartsreiter was legally insane, because he gave the wrong legal standard for criminal responsibility to the jury.

PROVIDENCE — A dead whale that washed ashore on a private Rhode Island beach almost two weeks ago was finally buried.

Ron Bogle, manager of Briggs Beach in Little Compton, said Friday that about 20 workers spent more than six hours cutting blubber off the 30-ton humpback’s bones and burying the pieces.

The whale, about 41 feet long, died at sea and washed onto the beach June 14. At first, the humpback was in shallow water and couldn’t be buried until it was on solid ground.

Beach officials attempted to bury the whale during low tide on June 20, but the carcass was almost completely exposed when Bogle got to the beach Monday.

BOSTON — Muslims are celebrating a sometimes difficult 20-year journey with the official opening of a mosque in the city’s Roxbury neighborhood.

The $15.6 million mosque, which has been conducting some services and cultural programs since the fall, officially opened Friday with a noontime call to prayer from atop the 185-foot minaret.

Bilal Kaleem, executive director of the Muslim American Society’s Boston chapter, said the facility is “a symbol of the Muslim community’s growth and development.”

LOWELL — A school committee member has pleaded not guilty to charges she threatened Superintendent Chris Scott.

School Committee member Regina Faticanti was arraigned Thursday in Lowell District Court after Scott told police Faticanti threatened to rip her “arms off, then (her) head.”

According to court documents, Faticanti phoned Scott in April to express her anger over the superintendent’s plan to possibly privatize the district’s food-service program. Scott told police that Faticanti used expletives and repeatedly threatened her.

Faticanti’s lawyer, Philip Nyman, said he questioned why Scott waited a week to report the phone call and that Faticanti’s remarks were made during a “heated political exchange.”

BOSTON — The state’s highest court has ruled that burial permit fees are legitimate regulatory fees, not an illegal tax, as a Fall River funeral director had argued.

But the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday that municipalities have the legal right to impose reasonable fees to regulate the disposal of dead bodies in a way that preserves the public health, safety and welfare.